The Contemporary Photobook Magazine
Review by Douglas Stockdale • Whose land is it? This is probably the underlying question for Lana Z Caplan’s photodocumentary project of an expansive region of coastal California, which also represents a broader question for all of North America and the world beyond. Her specific subject is an area generally identified as Oceano, located on the... Continue Reading →
Review by Melanie Chapman · At a certain age in life, admitting what you want to be when you grow up may feel like standing on the shore watching all boats, large and small, setting off to sea. You find yourself waving as the vessels grow more distant on the horizon and ever closer to adventures... Continue Reading →
Review by Steve Harp · Gail Rebhan’s About Time, subtitled Four Decades of Photographic Series, is a catalog of a retrospective exhibition at the American University Museum in Washington D.C., on view in early Spring, 2023. Photography is often defined (given the etymology of the word itself) as writing with light. But Rebhan’s work poses the question of whether... Continue Reading →
Guest Review by Micah McCoy • Birgit Kleber’s book, Photographers, takes a simple concept and rigidly sticks to the script, only occasionally deviating from the framework set in motion from the first photograph in the book. The book’s power, and it is a forceful book, comes from Kleber’s dogged adherence to a set goal; to... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale · When Alfred Stieglitz began his Equivalents series in the early 1920’s, that while looking up into the clouds he attempted to describe more than the visible surface of objects. It was his attempt to express pure emotion, to reveal a parallel universe to his own inner state, and that his photographs could assume... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale · During the initial days of the COVID-19 pandemic with the immediate requirement to shelter in place many of us were probably wondering what we were to do, when is this going to end, how am I going to be impacted this, on and on and on. Many, like Amy Elkins, were... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • The exhibition catalog that was developed for a traveling group show, Memory is a Verb, Exploring Time and Transience, which unlike many group exhibitions, is remarkable in its diversity by the eleven women who participated in this project. As stated in the foreword, “…brings together eleven women photographic artists exploring the liminal space between... Continue Reading →
LA Art Book Fair, entrance, copyright 2023 Jonas Yip Review by Douglas Stockdale and Gerry Clausing • This August we saw the return of the LA Art Book Fair 2023, which like many art and book fairs had been impacted by COVID 19 in early 2020. This book fair, sponsored by Printed Matter, looked and felt... Continue Reading →
Review by Matt Schneider • "fever days fleets erected at a dazzling pace rigs roaming the seas sonar boats scanning the ocean floor young men recruited fortunes made conquering frontiers establishing capitalism" (p. 77) Forgotten Seas, by photographer, Tanja Engelberts, is a hefty photobook. By this, I mean that it is large, yes. The book is 216 pages... Continue Reading →
Review by Douglas Stockdale • This retrospective publication of Paul Caponigro is not meant to be in anyway inclusive of Caponigro’s entire body of work to date. This beautiful book encompasses some of his most wonderful, if not iconic, visual poems. Many of these same Caponigro’s photographs are what initially enticed me to consider the potential... Continue Reading →
PhotoBook Journal 